El esqueleto de la señora Morales

Director: Rogelio A. González

Año: 1960

País: México

92 min.

Fotografía: Víctor Herrera

Música: Raúl Lavista

Guión: Luis Alcoriza según el relato de Arthur Machen “El misterio de Islington”, 1927

Reparto: Arturo de Córdova, Amparo Rivelles, Elda Peralta, Antonio Bravo, Guillermo Orea, Rosenda Monteros, Luis Aragón

Negrísima comedia que supone uno de los títulos de oro del cine mexicano y que resulta ser una pieza sorprendentemente desconocida o más bien involuntariamente olvidada o pasada por alto, como si su categoría de comedia, su abierto carácter popular, fuera una pequeña cojera que la impidiese colocarse en el pelotón de cabeza, en el de las permanentemente mencionadas y eso pese a pasar realmente por ser un título histórico y de ostentar una (justa) categoría de clásico, categoría que por desgracia no acaba de verse reflejada en una acceso mínimamente sencillo.

Dificultades para encontrar material (y alguna reseña de interés) al margen, “El esqueleto de la señora Morales” triunfa a lo grande en su apropiación sin reverencias del Buñuel más sardónico (no seré tan presuntuoso como para decir que su etapa mexicana es la mejor, pero desde luego es “mi mejor”) y avanza en paralelo a la agresividad de la época española de Ferreri y Azcona, aunque mucho menos triste y todavía más descacharrante.

Contando con la esencial participación del gran guionista y  habitual de Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza adaptando con descaro y tono popular al escritor gótico Arthur Machen, se construye una sátira amable, amable para los que merecen amabilidad y cariño, claro, para con los otros galones de vitriolo y mala idea, que retrata con aire desenvuelto un drama tremebundo. Una historia tétrica sobre la que un inspiradísimo Rogelio González realiza una labor de cámara sobresaliente, adoptando una estética seria, un claroscuro expresionista de cine negro americano repleto de angulaciones y composiciones rebuscadas (soberbia fotografía, con los rostros recortados por manchas de puro negro) dando lugar a una dialéctica entre las soluciones formales y las ideas argumentales que funcionan por contraste, una especia de efecto anempático visual (también por ese camino avanza su sensacional “score”) que aporta un punto de interés diferente sobre la obra potenciando así el tono caricaturesco.

Al éxito del invento colabora decisivamente la antológica galería de intérpretes, mención especial para la gran colección de secundarios, encabezados por un memorable Antonio Bravo como el muy poco piadoso “Padre Familiar”. Con un uso muy inteligente de la tipología física algo turbia de Arturo de Córdova, que además era un actor habitual de melodramas  y personajes tortuosos (el celebérrimo celoso patológico de “El”, eso por supuesto), para dar vida a ese taxidermista afable y verdaderamente bueno resuelto a cometer el crimen perfecto y encima contarlo. Y todo porque está martirizado hasta más allá de lo soportable por uno de los personajes más odiosos (sino el que más) de todos los tiempos, una auténtica hija de puta, una chantajista emocional, manipuladora, comesantos, agarrada, mentirosa acomplejada por su cojera y arpía castradora a la que estás ansiando que defenestre desde que asoma y a la que personifica una descomunal Amparo Rivelles, sin palabras para su interpretación. Divertidísima de principio a fin, repleta de afortunados “gags” (la misteriosa atmósfera vista arriba y que se crea alrededor de…¡cenar un filete!) y chistes recurrentes (las visitas, la jovencita meona, el historiador palizas y sus formulismos,…), acierta al parodiar y recoger ciertas constantes  de la escuela melodramática típicamente mexicana que  aquí se retuercen y encima no renuncia a funcionar como un “thriller” genuino, con momentos de tensión tan logrados como la resolución del crimen con guiño a Hitchcock vaso mediante incluido o la genial escena de la confesión final, mezcla perfecta de planificación enfática y comicidad satírica cabalgando a lomos de un anticlericalismo burlón que reparte latigazos entre curas metiches, meapilas y beatillas.

are you happy little gal?

after you have found that perfectly nourished plum

stashed away in the drawer

unwanted, uncared for

& misunderstood

will you handle it with care?

when you run your snowy white fingers

through its delicate pulp

each time you reminisce

the brief moments of togetherness?

will you cherish it forever?

after taking it all into your lips

and taste the hidden sweetness

that ease your years of pain

and emptiness?

in a world where no one cares

in quiet resplendance

the perfectly nourished prune

lay thinking..

little did he know

that the moment she found it

she cleansed it with her heart

and warmed it under the sun

she then planted it in the choicest plot

away from the weeds

hoping that in years to come

her tears of happiness & joy

will nourish that soil

and a perfect tree shall blossomed

so that this perfect little gal

can live & play happily

under the shade

of this plum tree..

Her om dagen skulle jeg bytte en dvd på Platekompaniet. Helst i den nyeste BBC-tolkningen av Fornuft & Følelser. Den var utsolgt. Og jeg hadde uansett glemt dvd’en jeg skulle bytte. På vei hjemover gikk jeg forbi en annen filmforretning, og siden klokken var fem på stengetid gikk jeg innom for å se om ikke jeg kunne plukke opp litt britisk perioderomanse der istedet. Akk o ve. Jeg gikk ut derfra med St. Elmo’s Fire. 80-tallet produserte også store periodedramaer. Jane Austen introduserte aldri en antihelt som spiller saksofon.

How did you come up with thistle twat? brilliant –Timothy Ni

When Jimmy Fallon first announced Avenue Q’s performance at the 58th annual Tony Awards in 2004, I was immediately turned off by his introductory brief of the musical. While their musical number “It Sucks to be Me” was quite impressive in its lyrical originality, it did not cover anything Fallon listed from its resume: “irreverent, inappropriate,  racism, depression, sex, internet porn, full puppet nudity…” and so on. But of course! It’s the freaking Tony Awards, where the R-rated aspects are christened from the formality of such high-class entertainment event. Since it’s a story about a bunch of slumdogs romping miserably around in a fictional burrough of New York, I figured that all you would see are muppet porn, profane dialogues and the usual crude humor that men are into; Finding purpose in life just has to include these things, really. Although I praised its down-to-earthness, this type of humor never gets to me. If you ever watch The Office or How I Met Your Mother with me, you will never once hear me chuckle. When Wicked performed their number “Defying Gravity,” I knew it was the musical of everyone’s taste. The costumes, makeup, scenic design, music and most of all, Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth’s outstanding performance, were just incomparable to something as artless as Avenue Q.  However, little did I know, Avenue Q was to beat out Wicked, a musical I was dying to see, for the Best Musical, Best Original Score in a Musical and Best Book adapted by a Musical Tony Awards, three of the most important categories to me. I couldn’t believe it. It was as if the whole world had been seized by horndogs, and that both the Tonys and Oscars had lost their class with the insistence that everything just has to have something sexually explicit. (I mean, American Beauty for the Best Motion Picture, seriously? ‘Cause all the motion I saw were wriggling bodies upon bodies.)

Regardless, on January 15, 2009, I was able to get a group of 20 people, in a duration of 14 days, to go see the popularly loved Broadway musical of the decade: WICKED. It’s $56.25 (Group+student discount!) per person in the orchestra section, just FYI. After viewing this musical in the orchestra belly section of Gershwin Theatre, I was stricken with wicked withdrawal symptoms that would go on for a few months. A clash of time,  betrayal of truth, battle between identity and society, blurring of Good vs. Evil, Wicked absolutely blew my expectations away with its gravity-defying magic! What else? Oh, I could go on about the magnificent Emerald city disco lighting effects, the heart-wrenching melody of Defying Gravity, the emotion-unraveling stir of No Good Deed, the amusement I maintained at the words of “unadulterated loathing..” of What is This Feeling, the catchy tune and phrases of all their songs practically. I became ever more befuddled at why it did not win the Tony for Best Musical and Best Original Score, because they are unarguably epic!

But one thing’s for sure, it has gradually become common that the opinions of critics and the public differ dramatically. I resort to a similar comment of the film industry as it applies to the musical industry:

“This is just how the film industry works nowadays; critics give bad opinions, the public usually has a differing opinion, and all is well in the world of Hollywood since the studios made their millions anyway.”-Alex Billington

I loved Transformers II, but the Oscars loved American Beauty. I loved Wicked, but the Tonys loved Avenue Q. Though, American Beauty and Avenue Q are in their own style, deep and artistic, I realized from this pattern that critics vouch for realism.

It doesn’t matter how magical, epic, imaginative or heart-stirring a content is, because the battle always comes down to Melodrama vs. Realism. And critics more often choose realism. They choose not to fall into the mystical well where mind, body and soul would be flooded with wondrous stupefaction. They choose not to base excellence on spectacle, no matter how much it is believed that these are what Arts, Entertainment and Motion Pictures are all about. It is definitely sensible to bring the audience away from a world they know into an imagined, dreamt realm.

Although, Avenue Q wouldn’t be as popular as Wicked, which won all the minor production categories at the Tonys, it succeeds in “idealizing realism.” I say that because after seeing it a few months after Wicked, Avenue Q brings up the most common and trivial things we all experience in life and satirizes them in a way that does not elude the nature of these issues but makes them something worth laughing at.

As an English major myself, I was able to relate and chuckle at their first song “What Can I Do with a B.A. in English?” Of course, these songs do not possess such grace and captivating melody that would melt you like Wicked, which is one of the important aspects of “good music” in my opinion. You can say I am a pretty big fan of melodrama, but I can respect realism at its finest creativity. Graphic muppet sex scenes, profanity, racism and caricatured tunes; why, these things have taught me to embrace the moments I feel most uncomfortable.

The thing I most endorse this production for is the ingenious re-coining of certain slang terms, puns and obscenities, with incorporation of some literary principles. You know what I’m getting at. My all-time favorite: MRS. THISTLE TWAT.

Mrs. Thistle Twat

Another word for vagina dentata that is. Twat is British for vagina, and thistle is self-explanatory. Brilliant and hilarious, this name combines slang, alliteration and imagery. How can one not laugh at this? The musical prevalently catches you off-guard with language like no other. I can now justify the Tony Awards’ decision to name Avenue Q the Best Musical of 2oo4. It does not live up to magic, but if you can achieve uncontrollable laughter with social satire and freaking Sesame Street from an adult audience, that is pretty awesome.

Si con Terence Fisher traté de saltarme los ceremoniales sin mayor éxito, con Bava tres cuartos de lo mismo. Un maestro y un genio que ya estuvo aquí con “La furia de los vikingos” y que volverá, eso sin duda. Esteta del horror mucho antes de Argento, autor y artesano, poseedor de un poderosísima iconografía estética y de un prontuario conceptual perfectamente representado en este irresistible dúo: “La frusta e il corpo” y “Operazione paura”, cumbres de la Italia gótica y tétricas maravillas sobre obsesión, muerte, pasión y amor.

“Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down“

La frusta e il corpo

Año: 1963

País: Italia

91 min.

Fotografía: Ubaldo Terzano

Música: Carlo Rustichelli

Guión: Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra, Luciano Martino

Reparto: Daliah Lavi, Christopher Lee, Tony Kendall, Ida Gall

Melodrama ultraterreno, romanticismo desaforado y fetichismo erótico perturbador para una de las obras mayores (y no precisamente más conocidas) de Mario Bava, donde conviven con particular perfección sus obsesiones temáticas y su corpus estético, la imposible belleza pictórica de sus imágenes y su arrebatado universo onírico.

Regreso a los terrenos del horror gótico de “La máscara del demonio”, con esa casi táctil atmosfera de pesadilla, pero con el añadido esencial del color (¡ah, el color!), que potencia una fotografía ya de por si asombrosa, en la que los rostros están constantemente rodeados de negrura profunda en combinación con un cromatismo por completo irreal y que incluye una de las marcas de fábrica de Bava, el personaje que avanza en primer plano mientras la cámara retrocede lentamente y la luz cambia dentro del mismo plano en una ejecución complejísima en lo técnico y fascinante en lo artístico.La bellísima banda sonora Carlo Rustichelli, de inspiración “chopeniana”, y una puesta en escena constantemente audaz, se suman a la densidad de la historia, a su sexualidad mórbida y su perversa mixtura de sadomasoquismo terminal y deseo incendiario explicitado en la mirada de la subyugante actriz israelí Daliah Lavi tras ser azotada y su turbadora manera de (literalmente y sin metáforas) correrse de dolor en una sublimación de lo carnal que no se olvida fácilmente. Dando como resultado una de las más hermosas películas del autor (que ya es decir) con un bloque central apabullante, casi mágico, casi inconcebible, en el que asombra el dominio de Bava sobre el tempo cinematográfico y sobre el espacio fílmico, a los que somete a una renovación (incluso una deconstrucción) que lo aleja de cualquier clasicismo, algo que será uno de los puntales de su estilo, y que le deja mano a mano con el referido Fisher como el mejor director del “fantaterror” europeo.

Christopher Lee despliega su proverbial magnetismo como amante torturado/torturador más allá de la vida y la muerte y la ya mentada Daliah Lavi maravilla como la mejor Barbara Steele, sacando explícitamente el monstruo que lleva dentro en un grandioso final que hace visible la mente escindida de la protagonista al mostrar por primera vez “desde fuera” la verdadera naturaleza del horror que la acecha y que no es otro que ella misma. Naciendo así no de lo fantástico sino de la misma humanidad, el eterno discurso “baviano” para este cuento fantasmagórico de amor y muerte, decadente y suntuoso, en el que lo pavoroso no emana de la truculencia de lo mostrado sino de las entrañas de la propia historia, de la locura que devora todo, incluida la imagen.

“Una promesa es muy facil de hacer, un corazón es tan facil de romper”

The Dream Syndicate, “I have faith”

Operazione paura

Año: 1966

País: Italia

85 min.

Fotografía: Antonio Rinaldi y Mario Bava

Música: Carlo Rustichelli

Guión: Romano Migliorini, Roberto Natale y Mario Bava

Reparto: Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Erika Blanc, Piero Lulli, Fabienne Dali, Max Lawrence

Pese a su horrible título de “exploit” de James Bond una de las obras mayores del gótico italiano, una manera o un estilo un tanto relegado quizás por la creciente popularidad del “giallo” entre el aficionado pero que resulta una de las formas más genuinas y apasionantes del cine popular italiano con títulos tan mágicos como “El molino de la mujeres de piedra”(1960) de Giorgio Ferroni, “Danza macabra”(1963) e “I lunghi capelli della morte”(1965) del muy reivindicable Antonio Margheriti (en breve lo pasearé por aquí) o trabajos del muy olvidado Camillo Mastrocinque como “La maldición de los Karnstein”(1962) y “Un angelo per Satana”(1966).Bava contrapone paganismo/racionalismo dentro de una historia de maldiciones con toques de leyenda en la que un médico (el elemento cartesiano violentado por la irrupción de lo fantástico/irracional) llegará a un villorrio tan dejado de la mano de Dios que incluso su iglesia está en ruinas. Un pueblo de callejones intrincados predispuestos al misterio que está aterrorizado por la superstición, las muertes inexplicables provocadas por las apariciones de una espectral niña de cabellos rubísimos y vestidito blanco(una idea absolutamente genial en su representación y que fue robada/homenajeada conscientemente por Fellini en su obra maestra  de 1968 “Toby Dammit” su segmento para la ,en conjunto, mediocre serie de adaptaciones de Poe “Historias extraordinarias”) que empuja al suicido a quien la ve gracias a su irresistible poder de sugestión hipnótica y la constante presencia de una mansión, que es cuna del mal. Un lugar maldito y es que esa niña, fue dejada morir, ahorcada accidentalmente en el campanario, sin ayuda y por ello es ahora convocada de tal modo que lo que consume al pueblo no es en realidad el horror sino la culpa, un terror mucho más real paradójicamente corporeizado en lo fantástico. El resultado es una película memorable que supera su pobreza de medios mediante un uso estilizado y sugerente de los decorados (como siempre en Bava los interiores forman auténticos laberintos escenográficos mediante la interposición del mobiliario entre los que la cámara serpentea) y las localizaciones (buscando siempre nocturnos brumosos que azucen la imaginación y conviertan una pared de piedra o un paso medio derruido en lugar de pesadilla donde cualquier cosa es posible), esas callejuelas angostas y sobretodo un cementerio musgoso sacado de alguna ilustración de cuento terrorífico y romántico, pese a que atempera el habitual delirio cromático de raíz lisérgica que es marca de la casa o a que abusa del “zoom” en contadas ocasiones. Desborda tensión y ritmo, ideas geniales llevadas a la cumbre con el momento puramente onírico del protagonista persiguiéndose a si mismo a través de un estancia con dos puertas que se compondrá en angustioso bucle espacio-temporal que demuestra que esa mansión no se encuntra en ningún otro territorio que no sea el del sueño (algo en lo que el auto reincidiría en la estupenda “El diablo se lleva a los muertos” un film realmente valioso pese a su tortuosa distribución y remontajes) y el intransferible sentido de la puesta en escena de Bava, siempre elaboradísimo y de un barroquismo exultante.

Una joya lastrada por cierta mediocridad en sus interpretes (con una Erika Blanc desaprovechada en Unipapel demasiado pequeño) y un final algo anticlimático (el fabuloso clímax en el caserón se resuelve de manera un tanto abrupta), pero elevada por momentos verdaderamente escalofriantes, con las apariciones de la niña de ultratumba al la cabeza (precedidas en ciertos momentos por una pelota que viene rebotando desde ningún lado y que sin duda Kubrick, al igual que Fellini, recordó para “El resplandor”) y en especial el suicidio de la joven posadera, obligada por la visión sobrenatural de la pequeña fallecida a ensartarse en abrazo mortal con una horca. Nuevamente redundar en una (otra) maravillosa banda sonora de Carlo Rustichelli y sobre todo resaltar la construcción de una atmosfera ominosa y fatalista, de la que es imposible escapar.

El año pasado, Die Fälscher de Stefan Ruzowitzky ganó Oscar como mejor peli extranjera. Nunca la trajeron formalmente a cartelera y sólo hasta hoy puedo verla a través de Cinemax. No se si es que no es buen negocio pero si no hagan que lo sea para que lo sea, es imposible que en Bogotá no haya gente interesada en ver este tipo de pelis en salas de cine.

No digo que sea la mejor peli del mundo, ¿quién puede decir eso de cualquier peli? Sin embargo el público bogotano se merece respeto y que las pelis que han ganado premios de La Academia casi que deberían ser obligatorias, es el respeto al cine comercial, al que están acostumbrados a traer, el que les encanta, simplemente privarnos de ese material es un improperio.

Die Fälscher es la receta perfecta para que una peli se gane un Oscar, melodrama del holocausto, los alemanes como bestias sedientas de horror, de indiferencia, de masoquismo, de tortura. Un antihéroe interpretado perfectamente por Karl Markovics, un testigo, August Diehl a quien recordamos por los basterdos de Tarantino y que aquí cuenta la historia. Finalmente, entrelíneas se nombra a Estados Unidos como redentor de ese oscuro episodio de la humanidad. Mézclese bien, no se revuelva y ese martini seguro levanta la estatuilla más codiciada en Hollywood.

Pero esta peli tiene más. La fotografía y cinematografía de Benedict Neuenfels desarrolla con cámaras montadas al hombro, sin tripodes, sin grúas, la sensación de un ascetismo formidable y ambientan con luces suaves los dormitorios de cinco estrellas de estos personajes.

La música es realmente conmovedora, y estuvo a cargo de Marius Ruhland con unos tangos y unas milongas y quien sabe que más piezas germano-argentinas cantadas al calor de un piano y un bandoneón.

La culpa y la conciencia vestidas elegantemente con oro y linos en Mónaco contrastan con los vestidos de lana artesanales que sin embargo eran los más distinguidos dentro de todo el campo de concentración.

Todo reúnido en un buen plato hacen de Ruzowitzky un buen director y una buena peli. Lástima no haberla visto en cine. Repito.

I’m bleeding all over the bandage box.

There’s blood on a 20 bucks.

The cashier flinched some as she clenched fresh mushrooms

All right, I was re-shopping at 3 in the night.

If you ask, I was too clearly too early after waking to take up the task

Of red sauce for 20, and due to new knives

Just sharpened that morning

I sliced a thumb along with a nice onion  then

I  compromised , handily,  red sauce for 20 family

With my own red sauce, now burning

W/dangerous genes to scald a newborn or

 Imaginably an  std that they

or even me would never dream of,

(One of the wages of  a dream love)

So I ditched  that batch.

Shoot,  it’s surely less polluted 

Than the bloody mix up merlin

Stirring on his convoluted Special,

Spilling in too much as usual.

Michael Haneke es un director alemán que hizo una peli de ultraviolencia en 1997 con clara influencia de Stanley Kubrick y Alfred Hitchcock con un reparto completamente alemán del cual sólo puedo reconocer a Ulrich Mühe quien actuó en la impecable Das Leben der Anderen en 2006.

Recientemente, están rotando la versión americana en Cinemax y al parecer lo más interesante es que el director no cambió nada, igual que la distribuidora que hasta los cortos de avances de la peli los dejó idénticos. El escenario es una casa burguesa en las afueras, rodeadas por un lago y un ambiente calmado. Es de corte psicológico y de una profundidad actoral muy fuerte. En el reparto de esta versión se encuentra Michael Pitt que ya resuena como un monstruo de la actuación, Naomi Watts en una increíble y desgarradora actuación y Tim Roth. La trama es que dos jóvenes llegan a la casa donde se hospedan Roth, Watts y su hijo y empieza una cadena de torturas psicológicas que no tiene fin durante más de doce horas.

Hablabamos con un amigo y desde que Pitt le pide unos huevos a Roth, al principio de la peli, uno se estremece con el tono en el que le responde y se crea de ahí en adelante una tensión electrizante.

Es supremamente gráfica y violenta.
Es sencilla y estremecedora.
Es entretenida pero a la vez muy tensionante.

Es una pieza de teatro impecable y definitivamente recomendada para seguir analizando, una y otra vez, ya que logra involucrar al espectador en estos juegos mentales y dejarle la conciencia dañada después de ser testigo de esta interminable tortura. No es violencia por violencia, es el espacio dejado por Kubrick en los 70’s después de su A Clockwork Orange donde se critica la sociedad, la asimilación del crimen y la violencia de forma natural en nuestras vidas y la psique de los llamados civilizados.

Sería chévere repasar la versión de 1997 y reparar en paralelo las modificaciones, los actores y el final.

Waterloo Bridge (dir. James Whale, 1931): A refreshingly different pre-code film from the afore-discussed Red-Headed Woman and Baby Face, this one sticks to your basic melodrama motifs, very D.W. Griffith style but minus the epic scope. WWI bombs dropping on London form the catalyst for the melodrama, ending up with feel reminiscent of A Farewell to Arms (which came a year later) and the like.

The Dangerous Thread of Things (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 2004): Typical but atypical Antonioni. Great to see some of those big shots of alienation and juxtaposition again, along with perfectly square and perfectly diagonal angles like only a Neorealist who loves Eisenstein can pull off. Dialogue is atrocious. This probably would have worked better not as a silent film, but without any talking. Hard to see what the big guy is getting at, but apparently he sees his “sickness of eros” as having some kind of hedonistic cure.

Broken Blossoms (dir. D.W. Griffith, 1919): A case study of any issue within a hundred miles of gender, this one is a tight, cohesive, and theoretically pornographic (in its etymological sense) excuse to watch a bunch of people die: the macho male “ideal,” the helpless damsel, and the aww-aren’t-you-sweet foreigner who attempts to rescue said damsel before coming to his own pathetic end. So much for proselytizing Buddhism and spreading world peace; the poor devil goes from missionary to creep, in the end making life even worse for poor Lucy and her pure-evil father/husband figure Battling Burroughs. We have Griffith to thank or to blame for so many of these now-common features of narrative cinema. Check it out here.

“I just love that Sandra Bullock.”

“Oh, I know!  She’s so natural and perky and down to earth!”

“She was great in that one movie — oh, you know the one I’m talking about, that one with the guy, and they’re from the South, and oh, it’s just adorable.  She’s just adorable.”

“Oh I know, I watch that one every year.  She’s just great.  I just love her.”

This is not an actual transcription of a conversation, but an approximation of one I’ve heard numerous times  — at church potlucks, on airplanes, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.  Because WOMEN LOVE SANDRA BULLOCK.  More specifically, middle-aged women, many of them members of the ever powerful minivan majority, love Sandra Bullock.  They love her for her inoffensive humor; they love her natural, unexotic beauty.  They love the fact that she ends up with normal looking, wholly likable white bread men in the movies (Bill Pullman, Harry Connick Jr., Hugh Grant, Benjamin Bratt, Ryan Reynolds) but they most especially love the consistency of her roles.

Normal looking nice guy makes normal looking nice girl happy!

Of course, these women are victims of selective amnesia:  Bullock has attempted to complicate her star image with risky roles, including parts in Crash, Murder by Numbers, and the second of the two Capote films, Infamous. (She played the Harper Lee character.)  But such roles have done little to alter her overarching image as likable, slightly madcap, and always the recipient of  pure and genuine love.

For Bullock is no sex object.  She’s a girls’ star — a Julia Roberts, a Meg Ryan.  Men do not generally find her attractive, but girls want to be her best friend.   The director of The Proposal explained “After I met Sandy for the first time, I remember thinking, This woman has been my friend for 100 years.”  She has a beautiful body, skin, and hair, but such attributes are generally revealed through the course of a narrative — she starts out an ugly, somewhat masculine, awkward duckling, only to be transformed through the quiet yet strong love of a good, honest man.   Indeed, she is often nearly asexual at the beginning of a film — see her business-minded superboss in The Proposal or her scorned, weepy break-up victim in Hope Floats.

You can tell she loves her career too much by the suit and the unmussed hair.

Bullock’s picture personalities is infused with promises and possibilities: you, too, fair viewer, can be transformed by the power of love.  Not all of her films are makeover fantasies — indeed, only Miss Congeniality features an explicit makeover — but the most popular of films repeatedly position a non-glamorous protagonist as a site for transformation, both emotional and physical.  Bullock’s presence in the lead encourages identification; she’s an awkward Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts with her makeup off and hair flat.  She’s the supporting actor/best friend made central, and women love her for it.

Her extra-textual persona supports this image.  In Glamour, she is described as follows:

Sandy loves her job but is not defined by it. And she knows how to have a life outside of Hollywood: She splits her time between L.A. and Austin, Texas, where she owns a popular bistro, Bess. She has a barn. She’s done a ton of good work for charities, like giving money to a New Orleans high school impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Hello, she even does her own home renovations, like tearing down walls with her bare hands! (OK, I might be exaggerating a bit.) But if I had to pinpoint what sets her apart, it’d be this: She’s humble. She’s real. It’s easy to lose yourself in this business, but Sandy hasn’t gotten swept up in any of it.

See!  She likes people!  She’d be friends with you!  “She’s humble. She’s real.”  She’s not a diva.  She probably makes her own food and drives her own car and goes to the grocery store.  Or so we are led to believe.

The other day, my friends and I were attempting to make a list of stars that our parents just love: stars who make them feel comfortable.  Stars whose movies they’ll rent without any foreknowledge of plot; stars who will entice them to go to the movie theater for one of their 2-4 yearly trips.  Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts made the cut.  But Sandra Bullock was the most unanimous nominee: there’s something so wholly inoffensive and uniquely attractive about her, something that Julia Roberts has lost and Jennifer Aniston never really had.  She makes 50 year-olds go see her fall in love with Ryan Reynolds.  Her films make big bucks overseas.  Her style and charisma translate.  She appears virtually ageless, but not in an envy-inducing manner (Demi More) or as a grotesque (Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone).  She’s not stuck up (Renee Zelwegger/Aniston/Courtney Cox), she’s not intimidating (Jolie), she’s not perfect (Halle Berry)  and she’s not too madcap (Roseanne).

Indeed, the only thing potentially controversial about Bullock is her choice of husband: motorcycle producer and heavily-tateooed Jesse James.

Bullock and Her Teddy Bear

Discursively, James has been constructed as the culmination of Bullock’s domestic fairytale.  After being chased by many a prince (Tate Donovan, Troy Aikman, Ryan Gosling, Matthew McConaughey, Keanu Reeves) she settled with the least moviestarsish, least expected of the bunch — a man who simply made her happy.  (And, coincidentally, recreated a narrative conclusion manifested in her most successful films).

In recent weeks, Bullock has been in the gossip weeklies — not to promote her upcoming The Blind Side or to apologize for the train wreck that was All About Steve, but because of her attempts to adopt James’ daughter from a previous marriage.   In US Weekly, the article’s title declares her “Battle for Her Stepdaughter.”  Bullock and James are attempting to receive full custody of James five-year-old daughter, whose mother, Janine Lindemulder, is a former drug addict, porn star, and general ne’er-do-well.  The article is smattered with pictures of a dressed-down, casual Bullock carrying and holding hands with the young girl.  Bullock’s image is placed in sharp contrast with the girl’s porn star birth mother: she is everything this blonde bimbo is not.  Bullock is quoted declaring “My greatest joy is…being a good wife, a good stepmom.”  She loves this child – and that’s what she’ll fight for.  (Again, sounds mysteriously similar to the storyline of one of her films — only The Blind Side involves a black male high school student, not a cherubic blond girl).

Bullock says she doesn’t want to do rom-coms anymore — in fact, with something like The Proposal, she’s attempting to forge a path for the ‘female Judd Apatow film.’  Whether or not this is true is beside the point.  For while The Blind Side is certainly not a rom-com, as evidenced by the trailer, it most certainly is a family melodrama.  As such, the film caters to virtually the same demographic as the rom-com: females, both single and married, between the ages of 20 and 60.  (Did you hear The Fray in the background?  Yep, they’re talking to you, Grey’s Anatomy fans.  Selfsame demo).

With that said, Bullock does not pull in the lower echelons of that demo.  She’s got what I’ve termed her Forever Fans — the 30-60-year-olds who will always see her films, like our mothers — but she has failed to attract a younger demographic.  Part of this is merely a matter of age — Sandra Bullock portrays 30-somethings and mothers, not teens and post-grads — but I’d also posit that it has something to do with her star image and its particular resonance.  Her particular brand of spunk, quirk, Southernness, and romance seems very 1990s to me.  Just as The Blind Side appears to be a remake of every film that’s ever told the story of white people saving black people, so too does Bullock’s star image seem to function as a reactivation and deradicalization of a certain type of female star: she’s Bette Davis without the teeth, Joan Crawford without the snarl.  Davis and Crawford often ended their films happily coupled, but just as often they ended them alone — sometimes in tears, but nonetheless triumphant.  Bullock’s characters never end unhappy; they rarely weather a storm without a silver lining already firmly in view.  Bullock is soft, quick to weep, and quicker to give in,  where Davis, Crawford, and even Stanwyk (especially in Stella Dallas) are steely, with a fierceness belied by their porcelain faces.  These women were also points of identification, but the women in the theaters at the time were hard-bitten by the times — hungry, over-worked, exhausted, and oftentimes, due to the demands of The Depression and World War II, without even the dream of the help of a man or romance.  The endings provided by the ’30s and ’40s melodramas emphasized a female independence that wasn’t simply a madcap act, neutralized by film’s end: it was a way of survival, a way of life.

Joan Crawford might eat Sandra Bullock alive…

Indeed, the ’softness’ and heteronormatively-coupled endings of Bullock’s films have everything to do with 1990s in general: I could describe most of Julia Roberts’ films using the same language I’ve employed to describe Bullock.  These films’ tone and conclusion likewise speaks to  what women — and 30-40 year-old women in particular –  imagine for themselves: how far they can reach, and what that place, and its potential splendors, might resemble.

Judging from Bullock’s recent films, happiness and fulfillment can come in the shape of a younger man, a retreat from strict professionalism, or venturing out of suburbia to participate in first-hand philanthropy.  To me, all of these choices seem to present female self-reliance and independence as a hollow promise; that those women who sacrificed marriage and family for professional development will realize, sooner or later, that they too need a man, a cause, something greater than themselves.  We can view this as selfless and a form of sacrifice…or as a troubling message that cultivating oneself, and one’s own desires, will never truly provide fulfillment.

I don’t dislike Sandra Bullock.  I like her (early) films.  But I do think that those who fail to understand her and her tremendous draw — as most clearly evidenced in Richard Rushfield’s perceptive yet reductive answer to “Why is Sandra Bullock Still a Star?” over at Gawker — they also demonstrate their lack of understanding of a key, if sometimes quiet, demographic.  Middle aged women may not ‘open’ a film at number one, but they certainly can keep a film going strong when everyone else is off Megan Fox getting chased by giant robots.  Media observers often express surprise when a film like The Proposal goes on to grosses $300 million international (on a budget of $40 million, no less).  Those very same observers — oftentimes male — simply forget the tremendous power, however ‘unglamorous’  it may be, of neglected demographics.

This post explicitly concerns Sandra Bullock, but I’m also writing it as hundreds of thousands of girls and women head to the theaters to screen New Moon, which is now headed for a ridiculously huge international opening gross.  Industry critics keep patting Summit Entertainment on the back for their luck in optioning the teen text, yet to attribute it to luck is to miss the point:  someone at Summit realized that the text wouldn’t just exploit the teen girl demographic, but the adult female one as well.  For The Proposal opened big ($33 million), but New Moon will open with $80 million domestic, if not more.  Why?  Women.  Some of them already Forever Fans.

To answer Rushfield’s question, Sandra Bullock is still a star — and will remain a star — so long as her forever fans keep consuming.  Her movies cost relatively little to make; even a bomb like All About Steve will not compromise her consistent palatablity.  And with small costs and a built-in audience, she’s a much more reliable bet than Angelina Jolie or the over-priced Julia Roberts.  The challenge for execs is how to cultivate new stars, equally inoffensive and socio-temporally resonant, to take her place in the years to come.  Who will be our Sandra Bullock?  Is it Jennifer Aniston?  Gennifer Goodwin?  Isla Fischer?  Kate Hudson?  Regardless, it’ll most likely be someone who men disdain, hot cultural critics ignore, and studios relegate to counter-programming.

Sandra Bullock matters, and is still a star, because women and their pocketbooks do, in fact, matter — and no number of billion dollar grossing smashfests will alter that fact.

nothing smells sweeter than

the fragrance from the east

a budding chinoiserie

that thresholds the paddy pond

and the lallang filled path

leaves stretching upward to the sky..

the moon noticed

and beamed its widest smile!

why do you try so hard little flower?

aren’t you scared of the coming monsoon?

in quiet dignity

she mused

longingly she stood unafraid..

as the bleak evening passed

and morning whistles its cock crow tune

the little bud bloomed

her sweet fragrance now permeates the air

for she knew

that he would ramble out from

his shed in curiosity

to follow the fragrance

as the smell took over where the snuffed candles fade

in an inkling

there he was-

nonchalantly picking her up

minding her every petal…

tucked it in his dust jacket

& took her home.

the sun grinned..

Fábio Barreto se defende de acusações sobre teor político de longa.
Cinebiografia estreia nos cinemas brasileiros em 1º de janeiro.

Questionado amplamente sobre a eventual influência do filme “Lula, o filho do Brasil” no resultado das próximo eleições, o cineasta Fábio Barreto saiu em defesa própria nesta quarta-feira (19), em entrevista coletiva à imprensa no Festival de Brasília, onde aconteceu a primeira exibição pública do longa-metragem.

“Queria fazer um melodrama épico. Essa foi a minha opção. Porque essa história não pode ser contada de outra forma. O filme tenta humanizar esse personagem [Lula]. Não procurei mostrar uma pessoa infalível ou perfeita. Tentei mostrar um ser humano com coração, sua força e fraquezas. Para mim, essas são as questões essenciais.”

O diretor, que chamou o presidente da República de “mito vivo”, disse ainda que “qualquer manifestação artítica vem acompanhada de caráter político”. E destacou que o filme relaciona a vida de Lula com os episódios históricos da época. “Mas faço questão de reforçar que a opção não é política, mas sim pelo melodrama. Queríamos mostrar as suas perdas, conquistas, fraquezas. É a história de um filho com uma mãe”, afirma, referindo-se a Dona Lindu, interpretada por Glória Pires, mãe do presidente.

Muito criticado por seus últimos filmes, Barreto revelou que se preparou muito para fazer “Lula, o filho do Brasil”. “Me preparei até ter esse filme nas minhas entranhas. Queria fazer um baita filme! Estava na hora. Me concentrei muito, fiz um trabalho de pesquisa enorme, entrevistei mais de 200 pessoas que não estavam no livro. Eu entendo hoje de movimento sindical mais do que qualquer outra pessoa no Brasil.”

Sobre a transformação do livro homônimo em roteiro, a produtora Paula Barreto afirma que os direitos do livro foram comprados em 2003, e que desde essa época vem tentando captar recursos para realizar o longa-metragem. A autora Denise Paraná falou sobre a dificuldade em fazer o roteiro. “Eram 530 páginas e eu tinha mais anotações ainda. O filme e o livro são coisa distintas. O que tentamos é ser o mais fiel possível, colocar a alma do Lula na tela.”

O episódio envolvendo Miriam Cordeiro e sua filha Lurian, resultado de uma relação extra-conjugal do presidente, não aparece no longa. De acordo com Paula, era necessária autorização de todos os envolvidos na história, e Miriam não concordou. “Então, nosso departamento jurídico vetou.”

Dona Marisa

O presidente Lula não foi à exibição do filme e disse que só vai assisti-lo no próximo dia 28, em São Bernardo do Campo, acompanhado de seus familiares e companheiros. Mas a primeira-dama Marisa Letícia esteve na sessão. “Ela me deu um abraço apertado, muito emocionada e me parabenizou. Eu tinha essa expectativa. É difícil retratar uma pessoa viva, podia ser que ela não gostasse de algo. Mas por ela eu já fui aprovado”, comemora Fábio Barreto.

A primeira-dama se sentou ao lado de Glória Pires, com quem trocou comentários durante o filme. “Ela me perguntou se o Rui [Ricardo Diaz, ator que interpreta Lula] também não tinha o dedinho. E me perguntou como fizemos para filmar. Eu expliquei que ele usava uma espécie de esparadrapo prendendo o dedo e que depois foi finalizado com efeitos especiais”, conta Glória.

Mas o encontro mais marcante talvez tenha sido o de dona Marisa com Juliana Barone, que a interpreta no filme. “Para mim foi muito emocionante, porque estudei a vida dela a fundo. Foi um dos grandes encontros da minha vida”, contou a atriz.

Depois da sessão, dona Marisa convidou a equipe do filme para um drinque com o presidente.

Lançamento

“Lula, o filho do Brasil” terá o maior lançamento de uma produção brasileira desde a chamada “retomada” do cinema nacional. Segundo Paula Barreto, deve chegar a no mínimo 500 salas de cinema. “Estamos começando a trabalhar também a distribuição internacional. Na Argentina, já está praticamente fechado, deve estrear em março. E, na sequência, vamos tentar lançar nos outros países da América do Sul.”

A produtora conta que o filme também foi enviado para o Festival de Berlim e que está aguardando convite para uma exibição lá, mas fora de competição.

A cinebiografia do presidente da República pode ainda virar minissérie na TV. “O primeiro corte do filme tinha três horas, ou seja, temos muito material inédito. Estamos conversando ainda sobre isso, mas sempre quisemos fazer essa minissérie.”

we can walk together,

but only for half a mile..

we can laugh and sing together,

but only for while..

for when laughter fades

& a set of footprints is left in the race..

faint illusions will trace-

the little bundled up maze.

will you walk with me?

will you cry half the cry?

when you are at your peak

when i am near to bye and bye?

we can walk together

but only for awhile

and hear the echoes in the distance

of gay, of tears, of cherish.

A novela Viver a vida, da Globo, passa agora a retratar o drama da manequim Luciana (Aline Morais) que ficou tetraplégica após um acidente de automóvel.

Nas artes dramáticas, a associação entre deficiência fisica e melodrama é fórmula garantida de sucesso, desde a era vitoriana.

De fato, deficiência física e excesso de emoção (ou melodrama) caminham de mãos dadas nos mundos da ficção e da não-ficção, pelo menos desde aquela época.

De lá para cá,  esta afinidade eletiva tem se tornado uma espécie de “estenografia cultural”: para indicar ou produzir excesso emocional, recomenda-se incluir um deficiente na trama.

No discurso público, um contexto emocional  tende a ser obrigatório quando a deficiência é o assunto, enquanto que uma infinidade de outros contextos possíveis para seu significado são opcionais ou secundários.

Se você parar para pensar é imensa  a profusão de personagens deficientes empregados como dispositivos de caracterização nas artes narrativas. A emoção, apesar de figurar naturalmente na experiência social e individual da deficiência, é superestimada tanto na imaginação popular como nas políticas públicas.

O surgimento do personagem deficiente nos palcos pode ser atribuído à censura a espetáculos, que vigorara entre os séculos 18 e 19 na Inglaterra e França. Apenas um número limitado de estabelecimentos teatrais tinha permissão da realeza para encenar peças “legais”, que usavam diálogos falados. A consolidação de um teatro ilegal dependia do desenvolvimento empresarial de tradições de entretenimento popular por sua capacidade de escapar das restrições oficiais: assim surgem os shows de anões,  a exibição de animais e freaks, e, acima de tudo, acompanhamento musical e canções.

Nesse contexto, onde o controle dos estabelecimentos teatrais se dava pelo monopólio da palavra, corpos suficientemente distintos para se expressar sem palavras tinham valor inestimável para o nascente melodrama.

Não por acaso, a primeira peça inglesa a ter ingressos vendidos explicitamente como um melodrama apresentou às audiências britânicas o seu primeiro personagem mudo: Trata-se de Um conto de mistério, de Thomas Holcroft, encenada em 1802.

Das diversas representações da deficiência na era vitoriana, poucas chegarão até o século 20 com grande aceitação popular. Tais obras remanescentes acabam funcionando como frames para a experiência da deficiência, tanto do ponto de vista dos deficientes como dos ditos ‘normais’. Um exemplo de obra que atravessou gerações nesse sentido e define, segundo Holmes, o modo como olhamos a deficiência é As duas órfãs [Les deux orphelines], de Adolphe d’Ennery e Eugène Cormon, que teve sua estréia em 1874 nos palcos londrinos e parisienses.

Somos herdeiros da pedagogia do olhar acerca da deficiência desenvolvida pela cultura vitoriana.

O melodrama ainda domina o modo de vê-la.

Have you ever watched a movie and compared it to shuffling a stack of playing cards? Well that’s probably the best way to describe the new movie from director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean).

Nicolas Cage stars as Dave Spritz, a well paid local weather man who is having a lot of personal problems. Spritz has split from his estranged wife (Hope Davis) and their two kids. His life just never seems to make any sense and it always seem to reach a pinnacle when he is hit in the face with some sort of fast food item from an irate pedestrian.

Spritz is trying to also find to reach out to his kids but they seem to be slipping through his fingers. On top of his declining life, Spritz’s father (Michael Caine) is also dying of cancer.

Before he loses his father forever, Spritz wants to show his dad that he can be a good father, have a good life and make him proud. You know kind of what we all want at some point.

What can Spritz do to stop his family from imploding? How can he save his life and find himself in the process? Trust me; Spritz has an idea or two.

On paper, “The Weather Man” looks like a great film. It is teaming with supporting talent, has a powerful upcoming director and it allows Cage to do what he does best. Then why does it feel so odd?

Well there seems to be two entities in this film. One is a story about a lonely depressed man reaching out to save his life. The other is this twisted sexually confusing sub-culture that seems to creep in at the oddest places.

I really enjoyed the first entity and I found that Cage was brilliant even if we have seen him do this kind of persona in about 5 or 6 other films. I also was a great admirer of Cage’s facial expressions in this film.

My favorite scene in the film is towards the end when Cage and his dad sit in the car and listen to Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock”. It’s touching, poignant and everything this film should have been. It’s everything I wanted from this film.

The second entity was alarming, disjointed, annoying and so inappropriate especially when a lot of it’s time was spent in the sub-plots involving the Cage’s children.

Maybe I am not explaining this monster within this movie very well. Let me try, without giving away too much of the subplots.

Imagine a situation where you are sitting in a psychiatrist’s office. The couch is comfy and you are relaxed. You begin telling this professional about some of the problems in your life. He is very interested and you seem to be benefiting from the session. Then out of nowhere an angry, naked midget comes out from behind the doctor’s desk and begins to dance as he screams at the top of his lungs the rudest language you can possibly imagine. Now think how this would affect you as you continue to tell your deepest problems to the doctor. That is the feeling that I felt while I watched “The Weather Man”.

To say that I was disappointed with this film is an understatement. I just wish that Cage would have shot that dancing naked midget with his bow.

2 out of 5

So Says the Soothsayer.

Love takes away their breath, yet in that fatal breathlessness they find life.

Like a lily blooming in winter, I relish in your cocoon

The sweet smell of scented petals garnishing my thoughts.

For I know I will never wilt-

and dews will never form

only frozen in time

with you.

the hunter soon puts down his gun cos the prized target continues to move in uncertainty. he knew that his age has caught up on him cos the weight of the gun has taken a hold on his grip. he is distressed. he knew that if he presses the trigger, one shot might just hurt three. the hunter trods back to his solace.

Contratiempo (Bad timing)

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Año: 1980

País: Estados Unidos

122 min.

Fotografía: Anthony B. Richmond

Música: Richard Hartley

Guión: Yale Udoff

Reparto: Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, Denholm Elliott

No pocos directores ven sepultada la gran mayoría de su filmografía bajo el peso de una sola obra, este es el caso del muy interesante, excéntrico y altamente pretencioso Nicolas Roeg, gran operador de fotografía (“Farenheit 451” y “Golfus de Roma”, ambas en 1966, por ejemplo) firmante de ese indiscutible clásico de culto que es  ”Amenaza en la sombra“(1973) pero que más allá de esta obra mayor su carrera se mece entre lo justamente olvidable (o evitable) como la inaugural “Performance”(1971) dirigida mano a mano con otro extravagante profesional como Donald Cammell (el hombre tras “Engendro mecánico”, 197) y convertida hoy en pieza de culto en virtud de su estragante caracter “bizarre”  y la presencia de Mick Jagger como trasunto de si mismo o la insufrible “The man who fell to Earth”(1976) a mayor gloria de Bowie y lo penosamente olvidado, como la extraña y pelín demasiado “arty” “Walkabout”(1971), la simpática adaptación de Roald Dahl, “La maldición de las brujas”(1989), “Dos muertes” un título casi invisible pero que cuenta con defensores y al parecer no carece de interés y por supuesto este “Contratiempo” que supone a la vez una película de increíbles posibilidades y un fracaso doloroso perdido en el ensimismamiento.

“Contratiempo” es una historia criminal y melodramática de “amour fou” y obsesión sexual contada/reconstruida a través de un ritmo sincopado, una narrativa elusiva y una estructura fragmentaria que es una auténtica exhibición de montaje puramente musical, al que no es ajeno su potente banda sonora que mece a los Who con Billie Holliday y Tom Waits ni, en especial, su trabajada asincronía que mezcla/altera el espacio físico/fílmico mediante la manipulación del sonido en relación a la imagen y viceversa.

La historia deja oír algunos ecos de “El último tango en Paris”, manierismos visuales y ramalazos de la histeria de Andrej Zulawski (del que también hereda su manera rompedora de tratar estilemas típicos del melodrama), de los trabajos previos del propio director (ese sentido de la narración “alterado” ya funcionaba a toda máquina en “Amenaza en la sombra”) e incluso inopinadas gotas de espionaje (ella procede del Este de Europa y arrastra un extraño matrimonio con un hombre mucho mayor que bien podría ser un espíay al que interpreta el siempre espléndido Denholm Elliott) que añaden delirio y extrañeza al invento, ennoblecido por una fotografía extraordinaria (con algún efecto sorprendente, como esos fondos desenfocados que parecen deshacerse como pintura húmeda) y sobre todo por esa facilidad asombrosa que tenía el mejor Roeg para volver inquietante y amenazante cualquier cosa solo con la planificación visual y la precisión en el movimiento de la cámara.

Theresa Russell fascina como desequilibrada belleza mezcla de frialdad, infantilismo y perversidad a partes iguales, que llevará a la perdición a un psiquiatra americano en una Viena extraña y peligrosamente hermosa a la que Roeg somete al mismo tratamiento que a la Venecia de, si otra vez, “Amenaza en la sombra” pero por desgracia el concurso del lechuguino Art Garfunkel como (incapaz) protagonista lastra toda la película al no poder transmitir la turbulencia y el progresivo desquiciamiento, la necesidad de poseer lo inaprensible de su personaje, con la excepción del cruel final en el que viola a una Theresa Russell agonizante (la única vez que ella se está quieta y el consigue mandar/controlar) y en el que la inexpresividad del actor se vuelve a favor del momento amplificando la parsimoniosa repugnancia y atrocidad minuciosa de un acto perfectamente milimetrado. Un clímax soberbio en el que el pulso de Roeg brilla con fuerza y su personal sentido de la progresión dramática y de la organización espacial, su en ocasiones despegado esteticismo y ese montaje ya referido funcionan a la perfección. Aún así resulta una lástima que el gran Harvey Keitel no se ocupase de este papel en lugar del de bien peculiar policía obsesionado con ese “bad timing” del título original que tiene a su cargo, en ese caso el resultado podría haber sido una obra maestra.

An object of desire you don’t desire to be, I bet the shop window dummies
give in just as easily
I try to top but have to make you drop down to the floor
Moaning in the darkness as we fake some more
Passion is no ordinary word
Not just another sound that you hear at night

Gillian Zinser’s new surfer chick character on 90210, Ivy, is reminding me of better more simple times, when all a girl needed to do for attention while surfing was pretend to drown like the great pre-teen temptress Gidget.

Gidget was a character so great that in the 1950s -1960s four different actresses had to play her in film, sequel, and television. I miss them all.

Sandra Dee as Gidget

Sandra Dee, the original girl + midget (a Gidget) introduced the role to teens everywhere in 1959 when she adapted the character from Fredrick Kohner’s novel Gidget into the film of the same title. Sandra Dee’s Gidget was blonde and stick thin with a high-pitched squeaky voice. Gidget was grossed out by men and unwilling to grow up. Sandra Dee was a popular actress in many more films including the melodramatic classic that is Douglas Sirk’s remake of Imitation of Life (1959) and also in the Tammy and the FILL IN THE BLANK Franchise. Dee went on to marry Bobby Darrin at age 18. And in middle-age became an anorexic alcoholic.

Deborah Walley in "Gidget Goes to Hawaii"

The next girl to fill the baggy boyish bathing suits of Gidget was Deborah Walley. Walley played Gidge as a wide-eyed red head in Gidget Goes to Hawaii (1961). Post Gidget, Walley was in 15 major motion pictures, most of them B- movie Beach Flicks for American Pictures. Walley last worked on Television in 1999 in a bit part on Baywatch. Sadly Deborah Walley died in 2001 of cancer.

The fourth lucky girl was Cindy Carol in the non-related sequel to a sequel Gidget Goes to Rome (1963). Carol had the shortest post-Gidget career, appearing in her last film in 1965 in the Brigitte Bardot movie, Dear Brigitte (1965). She was also the least popular among fans, her Gidget rarely surfed and often tested the word of Moondoggie.

Sally Field as Gidget

The last, and in my opinion the most important woman, to play Gidget was the one and the only Sally Field in the T.V. series adaptation of the film. Field’s Gidget was vivacious and conniving. This Gidge got dates, tortured her older sister, helped her community, dated her teachers and met pop stars all while being the model of the perfect daughter to Conrad Bain look-a-alike Don Porter. Sally field, known to most of my generation as the mother from Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), has had the most successful post-Gidge career. She has starred in more than 4 T.V. shows including The Flying Nun (1967-1970) and the current ABC Drama Brothers and Sisters. She has been in more than 40 films including Forrest Gump (1994), Steel Magnolias (1989), Where the Heart Is (2000), and T.V. movie gem Sybil(1976).

Gidgets, I miss your silly resistance towards being feminine, the frequent amount of times you hire boys to be your dates, and your gift for green screen surfing.

Gidgets, I miss your face-Shassie

Nick Ray’s In A Lonely Place fits into the very small category of films I enjoyed so much the first viewing that I immediately watched it a second time once the film ended. It’s interesting how the film is often referred to as fitting into film noir since it’s really a hybrid of that genre and Hollywood melodrama, where the crime committed in the film is given as equal narrative weight as the doomed relationship of the two leads.

Humphrey Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a successful screenwriter with a case of writer’s block. He invites an eager young woman over to his apartment to summarize a trash novel he has to write a screenplay on, she excitedly recaps the novel while Steele roams around his place exhausted, and then he ushers her out the door. The girl is then murdered, found in a ditch strangled, and Steele is pulled in for questioning by the police, along with his buxom neighbor Laurel played by Gloria Grahame – Ray’s wife at the time, although Bogie tried to get his then wife, Lauren Bacall, cast to play the role.  Naturally Steele and Laurel fall for each other, but as the film progresses she discovers Steele to be a borderline sociopath and begins to suspect that Steele may have killed the girl. Steele is cast in such ambiguity throughout most of the film that the viewer is as uncertain about Dix as Laurel is, and the film even strongly suggests that Steele is the murderer. However, when Steele is revealed as innocent at the end of the film his relationship is utterly destroyed with Laurel due to both Laurel’s suspicions of Steele and Steele’s abusive treatment of Laurel and the film ends with Dix walking out in a fit of rage as Laurel stands weeping at the doorway.

Bogart is simply magnificent in this film, and gives what some call the best performance of his career. I definitely wouldn’t argue; he crafts Steele into a neurotic and self-destructive sociopath – yes, yes, screenwriter Andrew Solt is to be credited as well, but come on, this role is all Bogie’s. Just watch toward the end of the film with Steele and Laurel in Steele’s favorite bar as Dix is tried to calm down by friends and Bogie wrings his hands in nervousness, there are a lot of nervous tics that Bogart adds that really add to the Steele character.

This film is very much Bogart’s film, and his performance is miles away from the others – especially Grahame who at times acts awkwardly and struggles with the most dramatic scenes. But credit should also be given to Ray’s superb direction and Solt’s brilliant script that is a unique anti-genre piece, never falling into the cliches of film noir or melodrama but instead pushing both genres into new directions. Steele is the ultimate Hollywood antihero, his intentions are never clear and the viewer is both sympathetic and critical of him – the scene in which Steele violently beats a man for cutting him off on the road is one of the most disturbing scenes of pre-New Wave Hollywood.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

From Fassbinder’s lovely and haunting quasi-adaptation of Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, this is an exposure of a relationship at its rawest and most revealing, one that never shies away from one of Fassbinder’s most coveted topics; the queer relationship through melodrama.

In the first Melodrama based post I analysed a scene from the film All that Heaven allows. In this post I will compare these points to the scene from Vertigo to see how closely Vertigo matches the Sirk pattern of melodrama. Since these are not references from other papers, I will colour my points in BLUE so that they can stand out and not be confused with questions or references.

1) Technicolor with Realistic Colours, yet highly exagurated colours. Mise en scene is highly colourful.

The colours in vertigo are very exagurated, for example Scotties face is so pink its almost purple, the natural light seems far too bright, the green grass is so vibrant and the Church is so white it shines. Perhaps this is a restriction brought about by technicolour, but I think the exagurated use of colour must have been purposefully done.

2) Characters are always in the shot

This is true during the start of the scene, however subverted during the chase sequence when we see things from Scotties point of view.  Vertigo does not disregard this rule completly though, it just bends the rules slightly. Instead of every shot showcasing a character or characters the rule changes to Every shot involves a character, either by showing the characters or showing the audience the characters perspective, and in an effect showing that characters emotions. Vertigo is indeed a character based drama much like All that Heaven allows.

3) upper-middle class vintage fashion and hairstyles

Scottie wears a very expensive looking shirt and tie and his hair is neatly greased back and combed, this is essentially a 50s uniform. Madelein also wears an expensive looking coat and long dress and her hair is neatly tied back. The fashion is very vintage and expensive looking, which hints at it being styled in an upper-middle class fashion.

4) Family circumstances and or forbidden romance

Scottie and Madelein follow a forbidden romance as Madelein is married and Scottie is obsessed with her and overtly sexual during the scene. The romance becomes even more forbidden (if that was possible) later on in the film.

5) Music takes precense in terms of representing emotion

Music is important in terms of representing emotion as it matches the action. But I wouldn’t say it would take absolute presence. Since this is a Hitchcock film, and Hitchcock being as manipulative and controlling as he is, the cinematography is key (particularly the many POV shots) when it comes to representing Scotties fear, anxiety and passive nature.

6) Lavish Mise en Scene

The absolutely massive courtyard and vintage church tower complete with an antique spiral staircase make for a very lavish and exagurated setting. While it isn’t a suburban manshion I would say it is infitting with Melodramatic tradition.

With these points its pretty clear that 50’s melodrama and Vertigo where pretty much made for each other, it follows all of these points very well, with very slight minor deviations.

I made points about Vertigo being a male orientated film, but with this new tie into melodrama, could this possibly give the film an entirely new meaning?

Keep those curtains wide open. There’ll be plenty to see (and discuss) around here for the next little while. The topic? The films of King Vidor.

Aficionados know all about this guy’s snakes and ladders journey across the first perilous century of film criticism. One of the most revered figures in Hollywood during the 1920s, Vidor’s rep probably took an even bigger hit than Frank Borzage’s during the latter stages of his own lifetime (1894-1982).

It’s not hard to see why.

For one thing, during the classical (sound) era, the director gravitated increasingly toward the kind of no holds barred melodrama that critics in search of cultural capital felt duty-bound to deride. Today, looking back from the other side of the “high-/low- brow” divide, we understand that the people who savaged Vidor’s “bourgeois sentimentality” (usually expressed in the same gendered terms used to marginalize ANY art centered upon the emotional life of the modern subject) were far more trapped within the middle-class looking glass than they knew. To me, nothing smacks more of “false consciousness” than the pallid observations of critical theory. I mean, really, how you gonna have a revolution without Ruby Gentry or Rosa Moline (or the intense dissatisfaction they represent)?

Another major aspect of the “Vidor problem” is the director’s wild rightward shift across the political spectrum, during the 1940s and 1950s. HOW did the director of The Crowd and Our Daily Bread wind up making An American Romance? It’s a real puzzler–at least on the surface. Not a good idea just to dismiss it either–not if you really want to understand what the hell happened to the country as a whole, after the end of the Great Depression.

And you know, it’s exactly the kind of problem that a student of Transcendentalism (and its effects upon American aesthetic and political culture) might be able to do something with. That’s me. Also, as luck would have it, Vidor was enough of an intellectual to proclaim his Emersonianism in a number of places–most notably in his aesthetic autobiography (A Tree Is A Tree) and in the 1964 documentary Truth and Illusion: An Introduction To Metaphysics. So the stage is set–and (thanks to the magic of avi files) I now have access to ALL of the sound films and a large percentage of the silents (including all of the key entries from Vidor’s glory days at MGM under Thalberg).

So we’re gonna do it. Chronologically, I think (with an introductory piece on Truth and Illusion to kick things off). I’d love to promise one entry every week, but I won’t go quite that far. This blog is never gonna be completely stable. I’m sure King Vidor would approve of that.

]]> http://robertrostantcmp.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/melodrama-ii-vertigo-as-a-melodrama/ Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:33:56 +0000 robertrostantcmp http://robertrostantcmp.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/melodrama-ii-vertigo-as-a-melodrama/

During the course of my research I stumbled upon the site (http://yorty.sonoma.edu/filmfrog/archive/All_That_Heaven_Allows.html#basic_characteristics) which mentioned some basic points about Melodrama, I will compare these points with Vertigo to see how things stack up. (I have highlighted every word found in this source in RED.

1. Legibility: everyone can read it

This is partially true with Vertigo, except it subverts the rule by giving it a predominantly male reading, with the main point of view being that of Scottie. While everyone can read it, the ones that can relate to the film, especially with the theme of Scotties masculinity crisis and fear of impotence.

2. Expressiveness: given to exaggeration:

everything brought into the open

Vertigo follows this rule, its full of expressiveness (be it through the actors lines and experessions, the music or even the cinematography) in this regard it follows the main rule of a melodrama, expressiveness. Especially how the romantic, yet dramatic music during the opening minutes of the scene in vertigo sounds very expressive. I belive music is the most important aspect to a melodrama, since the word melodrama borrows from the word Melody, indicating a reliance on music.

3. Simplification of roles:

good and evil clearly delineated

The problem with Vertigo is as a film its not as black and white as say North by Northwest, the characters are very complicated. We cannot completly support Scottie as he is trying to force a women he is obssessed with into an affair, but we feel for him as a hero. At the same time Madelein seems pretty suspicious and the fact a crime is going on has not even yet been revieled. Good and evil are not clearly delineated in Vertigo.

4. Strong identification:

emotions alive w/high suffering

Men can Identify with Scotties self doubt and the actors and cinematography as well as the music make a point of the emotions. And the amount of suffering that our hero and heroine are going through.

5. Devaluation of language:

language less important than mise-en-scene

Lets be honest, a lot of the speech in this sequence can be ignored and the sequence would still make sense. Whats important is the mise en scene, in particular the Church tower with its phalic symbolism and almost spiraling staircase highlighting Scotties doubts and fears.

As you can see, Vertigo follows some of the basic rules of melodrama, however it does make a point of subverting some of the rules.

Is their any further links between this sequence and Douglas Sirk’s melodrama?

Perhaps I should cross reference the Vertigo scene with the seen from For all that heaven allows